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hi it's me again. I read  couple of books in the past couple months... i would've read More except possession litr killed me and sucked my soul out etc etc which, it was literally good, it was a good book, i enjoyed it and enjoyed reading it and did always want to keep reading so don't ask me what/why/who/where/when like i don't knowww i don't knowwww ...  wow so it's march 30th rn... sorry it's april 6th now so literally fuck my life... and i cannot say anything except that I am a bad person (which we knew) and I don't get around the block (which we also knew) ... but also i planned so well bc my reading stats lowkey look inflated as fuck bc i was cramming tf out of those books in january... 

hey guys. welcome to my post. today I will be updating you on a variety of topics and items and such, such as: books_i_read (#Literacy_Yayyyy!), games_I_Played (who up silking they song? anyone want to silk my song? hey gender-averse bug, i saw you silking your song from that conveniently placed ledge over there), and BL_I_Ran_Through (yeah it's a ran through joke idk i'm not coming up with something better)  (i could make a 'ran through like that uke's hole' joke but that's crass and I also don't like my ukes ran through!!! both seme and uke should be monogamous and have lost their virginities to each other but still be really good at sex. those are my unrealistic expectations informed by pornography for the genre). I hope you enjoy. like comment and subscribe. and I am open to receiving private DMs about a vis-a-vis engagement exchange relationship... we can talk rates and word counts and prices in private. let me know if interested! 

Q1 in real physically published/digitally acquired books
the stuff I read: in custody, human acts, possession, love in a fallen city, circling song, god dies by the nile, the wizard of earthsea, idol burning, how fiction works, annihilation (incompletely), denison avenue, luster, no one is talking about this, this is going to hurt. most of these were by women! so wait YAY SLAYYY... 

[ in custody ] anita desai
oh this book is so fucking good... anita desai is just really fucking good... it does a really incredible job of marrying it's characters with their environments and captures the dry season and choking dust of history as well as disrepair so well, the descriptions of the landscape are just really striking and I think there is something so noxious, pitiable and yet deeply engaging with how terrible the men this novel follows are. everytime you read anita desai it genuinely drives in how much of a hack kiran desai is and how the difference in their education/culture leads to a richness in anita desai's prose that kiran desai with all her attempts at emulation/musicality never manages... like truly our nepobookerslop author... there is a real verbose quality in anita desai's work that could be offputting in how it tends to interrupt the reading experience at times, but i find very charming. the other thing about anita desai is that she is so good at doing Real Subcontinental People/Real Subcontinental Situations. another win for small not classic caliber novels! 

[ human acts ] han kang, trans deborah smith
this was genuinely very haunting, and i loved the way the narrative moved between narrators, especially when she begins to self-narrate as the author ... and I think one of the things that stayed with me was that these kids were buried in their school uniforms because those were their best clothes, that was how poor these families were. I think as a reconstruction of history, it aligns with the saidya hartman venus in adonis method of like, this attempt to restore dignity to those who were so cruelly stripped of it, while also just asking if it was worth it, to participate in an act of rebellion/revolution that led to such total destruction of a life. I really am not sure how to word this, but there is a strain to nobel laureate literature that asks about the things one as a human survives as well as the things that one as a human will do to survive and I think it's a much more raw and realer way of approaching existential questions and the general realm of compared to like, philosophy. because there is something very grounded and valuable and close and deeply touching about recounting the way a young woman works fourteen hours a day and ruins her body and still has a dream of going to med school and you know she does not survive this story and you know that nothing more happens or even would happen but still this is the life she clings to and wishes to live in.

[ possession ] a s byatt 
one half of this book is really really good and the other half of this book is so stuck to a specific cultural moment within the Academy that it sort actively ruins the experience of the book. as it says on the cover, it is a romance so I genuinely can't even begrudge it for the super neatly sweetly tied up ending but holy shit is the victorian romance half SO SO GOOD and the 80s british academia half like, really not. byatt has some really beautiful musical prose at times, and I love the little details of misspelling in the 19C letters but found other details like the heritage black amethyst brooch soooooo cliche... but again it is a Romance... it's actually really confusing as to what byatt feels about 2nd wave feminism esp within the academy because she does satirise it so so much but she is also taking the piss out of everything else so in the end it just feels like she was saying nothing at all [especially with how her female characters have all their stories resolved via Reward of Romantic/Sexual Connection] ... like oh okay. it was fun though! long but fun and some of the poetry was nice.

[ love in a fallen city ] eileen chang, nyrb translation by karen kingsbury
one note: I do think eileen chang's own translations of her work were much better than kingsbury's which is soooo... but this truly was a collection about love and economics and FINALLY while being TRUE TO FORM, the story that this collection was named after was the best one. it was very very good and genuinely thrilling because the first half is them having a totally insulated romance in hong kong and then suddenly? bombs?! but the only reason that it feels sudden is that their wealth allows them to completely ignore the political world around them until it no longer can and even then!!!      one of the greatest literary manuevers ever [left un?]written imo. it's such a incredible narrative choice. she has this very short story about two people meeting in a tram that is sooooo #Literature_of_the_City like it goes perfectly hand-in-hand with that baudelaire poem To A Passer-by... eileen chang is genuinely very witty and incisive and also just like, it is SO FUN to see the Origin(?) or Natural uses of all the classic trashy cn webnovel tropes like the third green tea bitch wife of so and so is soooooo fun and cute to read about in Serious Literature... 

[ god dies by the nile, circling song ] nawal el sadaawi 
I think maybe my sadaawi experience would be improved with better translations perhaps, but I didn't particularly like either. sort of too modernist in prose for me... it was really like, poor village women gets raped, rich village man does the raping and then colludes to fuck over a fellow poor village to frame him for the rape, he gets violently murdered, and also someone is getting brutally mind fucked by the military and also tons of honour/shame culture against women and religious psychosis/guilt and female genital mutilation... I like to read 'world literature' because I want to see how the other side lives/lived and i think she did do that for me. like yayyy i can say I understood a thing or two about rural egypt in the mid-late 20C...  i enjoyed the depictions of how these villagers worked and mingled in the stench of the bulls and dry fields and their own fetid sweat, but I am not sure I could stomach that much more of the 'her pointy breasts under the cloth' and totally hallucinogenic nature of how one act of violence leads to another leads to solace in mixing up childhood fantasy with memory to cope et al et al... again, I think some of these things could just benefit from a better translation. I also think I don't actually enjoy reading about violence in women though I understand that is true and factual and the very real lived reality... 

[ the wizard of earthsea ] ursula le k guin
now who was going to tell me ursula guin wasn't actually black... this is what i get for going to tumblr university....     anyway this is really the lowest of her low hits.... icb you would tell someone [who is not 10] [but even someone who is 10] to read this instead of her greats hits a la THE LATHE OF HEAVEN    or the one that gay [and other types of] people love like LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS or even the equally didactic but genuinely just a better narrative of ANNALS OF THE WESTERN SHORE ... like maybe the other books in this series are better but genuinely this shit just fucking sucks!!! it's way worse than every other guin.... she's way better in other ones... 

[ idol burning ] rin usami 
bookclub for tw3... the other pick was bunny which i dnf'd after reading like 3 pages of because I could immediately tell it was going to be bad and accurately predicted [allegedly, according to eva] the ways it was going to be bad... if you know the flaws of mfa fiction you know them...  not that this was that much better. the descriptions in this were more interesting and sometimes quite discomforting in a way that aided the sort of narrative goals...   one of the books were the endnote is a thousand times better than the actual book    but all the same  it was fine... not anything in particular but not egregiously bad... 

[ how fiction works ] james wood
this is really good at describing free indirect discourse in that it sort of parses and teases out the near indecipherable layers of like the [aperture, depth of field, iso] of narrative technique specifically. but at one point he literally loses steam and runs out of meaningful things to say and flaffing like 'fiction is Not Real... but can Resemble the Real... that's realism... and we like Realism    because it reminds of us what is Real and Resembles Reality'   like yeah buddy... it sure does.... the reading list of all the books he mentioned at the end is pretty fun though I enjoyed that...   Also, I read this book because my THE NOVEL professor was like 'if u want theory of the novel stuff you should read this' because this was secretly a creative writing and mindfulness class instead of like, a real academically rigourous look into the novel. but as I've said. this quarter was about losing. 

[ luster ] raven lallani
for class. an mfa novel that wasn't written like total shit. as in, had somewhat of a unique prose style. did that make the book good? no. but was if better than the usual mfa slop thus elevating the experience completely? Yes. it's like     going to a tims and they've actually cleaned out their ice coffee machine. like no it's not good but yes also it is so good comparatively. i think the most enjoyable parts of this novel was were it was just doing low art / high octane absurdism    and the bad parts were the realism 'meaning of life' type shit... like i don't want or need or wish another novel about [ young woman has sex with man realises that she is worth more than the sex she has with men ]    it's none of my business... i don't care... i appreciated the weird sisterkinship she has with the guy's wife but genuinely this book was at it's best when it was like 'isn't life sometimes so crazy and weird and abrupt and full of strange coincidence?' instead of the          other half of it...    

[ no one is talking about this ] patricia lockwood
also for class. lin mentioned patricia lockwood ten million years ago and she is invoked often enough with elif batuman but what makes elif batuman good and genuine and funny and delightful in her errant moments    are what I precisely dgaf about lockwood, which is that lockwood is a poet by training ! she's a poet and you can tell !!! and so there's this thing where the individual sentence has to be non homogenous or whatever ocean vuong was saying [completely ahistoric btw] and certain discord and tension within the section/paragraph because that it what you want a poem to do. you're always controlling for stops and pauses and abruptness but fundamentally, imo, that' s not what makes a novel's prose good. anyway this book was internetty, which is a quality i knew i would not enjoy and do not look for in books. it's also emotionally manipulative as a whole, which is not a bad thing but what ends up happening is that her end note, where she reveals the name of her baby niece, is on the whole way more emotional and way more deeply affecting than the whole damn book! 
 
i guess this book had the same problem content wise as idol burning which is like, so this is my life and my lived experience [and other books Have been able to use these things to their benefit, #The_idiot] and i just don't care for the way you've described or experienced it because it's not telling me something new or illuminating it in a new way... 

[ annihilation ] jeff vandermeer
also for class. okay so I read half of this and then the rest via wikipedia.... it was fine. I have known better scifi and honestly ... perhaps truly a book that amounts to the wikipedia summary of, to it's detriment or benefit. obviously it's better-written than most popular scifi [a la the newish stuff of brandon sanderson/andy weir] but also genuinely so disappointing to have the middle plot twist reveal be like 'i, a clear asexual aromantic in a very lesbianistic set up, have a husband who i am on this expedition to look for'       also   the prose is not accomplished enough to sell the    cosmic/weird horror vibe it tries to go for... which    it's literally more descriptive and rich in environment than most scifi so i guess that's part of it's success... but i should finish it properly before i say anything too definitively... it's literally that i was reading this and going 'omg... i love scifi.... i wish i could reread the sparrow right now...' 

[ denison avenue ] 
for class. genuinely a book that pissed me the fuck off because there's an entire century of literary tradition that it's trying to work off of/replicate/capture and if anyone involved had read a single modernist novel it would've been so much more successful in what it was trying to do. as it stands, the op was like 'this was originally an instagram project' and Yes, it does read entirely like instagram caption prose. congratulations for yet another successful rupi kaur rip off that doesn't even outdo rupi kaur! 

[ this is going to hurt ] adam kay 
ooooh. this one has been on my personal tbr foreverrrrr... or for a while, since an edit of ambika mod from the show goes viral every now and then... it was so painfully obvious this was meant to be funny and snarky in a british 2010s humour way and wasn't. but the parts that weren't him trying to be funny were very good and really worth reading i think. if anyone remembers the new yorker article that came out about the NICU baby 'murder' case where a nurse was essentially framed for failures of the system, this is just another look into that system and how much it punishes everyone involved and squanders itself. one thing that was so funny is obviously the egregious amounts of pussy jokes in this [the author was in ob gyn] so when I watched the show and litr within the first 10 minutes, I was like 'whoa... bespoke #woke choice of making yourself gay in your autofictional show about yourself' which genuinely could've been one of the funniest things anyone has ever done [since he wrote the show!!!] but no he's just gay in real life and he was cautiously straightbaiting in his memoir... 

Q1 in motion media
>so the last real video game I played fr fr was hades 1 on my laptop when it released. before that, like the remains of edith finch on my friend's laptop in hs, and before that, infamous 2 when I was like 13/14. I am an avid enjoyer of watching games. which is why I will also make this the movie+tv show section because all of them are basically long form moving visual narratives to me. I just have not had a console [with video games i want to play] in like over 10 years. anyway so recently, i acquired a guy who bought a switch a couple years ago and never played it and was like, 'hey babe, do you want to play my forgotten never used switch since you are the Real Gamer between us' and i was like, Well... I shouldn't because I will forsake all of my academic responsibility to fuck that shit up for 14 hours a day. so dear reader, please guess what I did. 

spoilers for: hollow knight silksong, da pitt, this is going to hurt, kal ho naa ho, rocky aur rani, wuthering heights the movie [i was held hostage], the secret agent, hamnet, emma 2020 (again!)

hollow knight: silksong
okay I have to preface this with (a) I don't care about spoilers, I hate not knowing more than I enjoy being delighted by a narrative twist; (b) I am not one of god's pure gamers. or maybe I am truly the only pure gamer because Idgaf about narrative i only care about gameplay if i'm playing a game. if you want me to ENJOY your story I am better off watching someone else do it on youtube, bc if I am playing the game I will be button mashing the shit out of the dialogue to get back to PLAYING THE GAME!!!... also. as someone who loves To Know, I love to watch a 100% speedrun of a game to know what to do/where to go, because to me the part that is important about playing a game is Do I Have the Skill To Do The Same?      if a game litr is just someone pressing a button to go next, like someone else can do that for me that's none of my business... 

as someone who loves Environments and Exploration as well as combat, would I say the metroidvania, say even, the dark souls of metroidvanias, are the genre for me? I don't know. results nonconclusive... currently I have 85 hours in the game, I have defeated the top2 most infuriating bosses a la: Groal the Great, and Savage Beastfly 2, both who I did not find *that bad* by the end of it. obviously I got through both the cogwork core and mount fay, and am currently failing the fuuuck out of the abyss climb section so yayyyyyy for that. inshallah she will succeed soon... the fights i've enjoyed the most are LACE, i LOVEEEEEE fighting lace SHOUTOUT TO LACE... she is so fun they overtuned the fuuuuck out of this boss. phantom was also really fun but I was definitely overpowered .... i liked widow obviously, and am saving the last sinner fight for no reason. okay my thing is that I lowkey have gotten to the point in the game where there's only boss battles left for me to do and that's like... Fine I Guess but I miss the exploringggg...    so I keep not fighting bosses.... I enjoyed the platforming parts more than I thought I would.... I fucking love the music and the visuals of this game. I LOVE HORNET!!!!!!! whom I have loved since like 2020... so yeah ofc... 

imo so much of my pleasure about this game comes from the fact that one of the most anticipated and biggest releases of all time is a game about WOMEN and MOTHERHOOD and in a serious and meaningful way and KINKEEPING and COMMUNAL CARE which is so so awesome especially for like mainstream [non indie] video game, which is a genre that is still in 2006 re: gender politics... anyway it's fucking awesome and has many awesome awesome characters one of which is kicking my ass, SECOND SENTINEL!!!     anyway I'm content with the knowledge that I'm a gamer but I can't even be like 'this is my favourite game' because I don't have enough games under my belt to be making such definitive statements. there's no way that I'm not having fun but dangggg can it be rough.

no other choice
oh this movie was so fucking good park chanwook !!! i love that this genuinely is a black comedy and it makes such good very prescient commentary. fucking love that it ends with his daughter playing the cello for them as he loses his hearing for this job he's literally killed to afford. i love the final shot of their house/compound where you realise it's literally secluded from a very suburban row. GOD!!!!! also everyone in this movie does a killer performance, especially the two wives.

emma 2020
still one of the greatest and most perfect movies of all timeeeee IDC IDC if you disagree you are going to hell... yes this may be personal shade sorry I just don't get it NO ONE is allowed to dislike my favourite most perfect movie of all time... 

+clueless 
completely massacres the entire point of emma by not having any of it be cher's fault... so actually it's terrible and i hate it... 

the secret agent
really good acting and really great cinematography and SHOUTOUTTT TO THE GLOBAL SOUTH BELT this movie is sooo good at conveying humidity and heat through the choice of shots and the costumes, like the very thin translucent shirts and slobby shorts for everyone is such great costuming... I liked all the narrative choices and manuevers, but the future/present story is the weakest bit... 

wuthering heights
this movie was so egregiously bad that I started reading real actual wuthering heights in the middle of my viewing. and it was genuinely so much better. and it wasn't even funny!!!! kind of the only hysterical part was genuinely when it become a charli xcx music video for a little bit and even then I just got so mad about all of the narrative choices being made...

hamnet
this movie has 1 good scene and it's when hamnet goes 'something's there in that corner, watching' and it changes so the audience is now watching from the corner and you realise you are the Predatory Vulture of Death feeding on the emotional pain/torture of these children and it's really really good... otherwise is genuinely total shite, I think I like joe alwyn as an actor, paul mescal's gay earring staying in was certainly A Choice, the cinematography is really good and beautiful but the movie is just awful as a whole. i like really was so ready to cry so much and I only cried 1 time. like the emotional manipulation movie can't make me cry more than once? be fucking forreal rn i cried at PROM 2011 which remains so stark in my mind as a aberrant occasion bc it really highlighted to me how i have the emotional integrity of 1-ply tissue paper.

zootopia 2
this is only making the list because I have to tell you guys that H's sister watched this movie 11 times. nicke wilde is a wwx variant btw.... his ukeism could be off the charts if they let it... 

kal ho naa ho 
genuinely a movie where srk is so handsome and stylish in all the dance sequences, but especially pretty woman like the little bit of belly was soooo chic! also like SLAYFUL SOUNDTRACK. and naina is sooo cuuuteee in looks and personality like i loved that she was so angry and annoying and stubborn and headstrong, like so sossososo cute moebomb. it was really an early innovation for polyamory/challengers-style trios but they didn't quite stick the landing and i was genuinely so baffled by the ending like Ok So what? like i just felt the emotional resolution was not resoluting... 

rocky aur rani
this movie is genuinely such a good comedy it's unreal ... of the most unintentional is the totally shit bangla the bengali family speaks, but like rani having her own theme song that riffs whenever she has a #Girlboss moment is so crazy. and also: One of the wokest movies to ever come out of bollywood. ANDDDD the main couple not only have hella chemistry but you actually root for the competent smart girlboss x himbo with a heart of gold. the fucking dola re dola climax sequence entire sequence is SOOOOO GOOOD!!!! like genuinely emerald fennel fucking WISHES her total opulence and visual overindulgence looked like that. but genuinely why does rani have a gay stay at home dad and lesbian breadwinner mom and a grandmother who endorses cheating. I also really felt like the final emotional climax/fight was really well earned and the way rani defends herself + the eventual resolution is really well done because it's fucking true no matter how much you hate your boyfriend's sexist pig dad you can't be raising a hand against him!!! but also true he has to apologise first for you to apologise... also loved the respective grandmothers and rocky's mom and sister... this was a rewatch and I was lowkey playing skong the entire time but it genuinely was so good.....

the pitt
genuinely seeing the discourse about this show has been 10000000x times going 'is this everyone's first time watching a TV show?' my top3 to no ones surprise are: javadi, al-hashimi and mel.. also like insane that javadi is genuinely the most simple character to understand and lowkey genuinely the only person who has no real flaws other than nepotism [which she can't even control] and somehow we still get befuddling takes about her.... like... Ok.....   I LOVE DR. AL-HASHIMI I BELIEVED IN HER AND WAS ON HER SIDE SINCE DAY 1!!!!!! like insane that you have spent an entire season with an extremely empathetic autistic woman who likes to follow rules and protocol [mel] but it's suddenly repulsive and terrible when it's coming from another woman in s2? like is it because she's in a position of power now? is it because she's brown? it's not the ai thing for sure because they whiteknighted the fuck out of that.     i just think it's crazy that i've seen trinity santos getting read as autistic before al hashimi like.... okay let's all hate rigid rule followers for no reason....     they definitely gave her and trinity the most compelling stuff to work with this season, so shoutout to them ... and i also genuinely can't even be switzerland about trinity santos like i'm giving it her overeager defenders even if they ship garsantos and thinks she's a bottom like she genuinely has done nothing wrong and is always reacting to situations in a really normal and RIGHTEOUS way    like of fucking course you want to see your MALE coworker get crucified for being a terrible sexist pig to you and instead you get to be culpable in letting him get away with STEALING DRUGS FROM HIS HOSPITAL ...  like i litr don't know how people don't immediately clock the gender politics and feel sympathetic towards her reaction, even without knowing about her trauma or like anything else. like you would be mad as shit as just as vindictive and feeling terrible and unforgiving in that situation!!!!   LIKE HAVE YOU NEVER FELT LIKE SHIT BECAUSE A MAN TREATS YOU LIKE SHIT FOR THE CRIME OF BEING A WOMAN SHAPED TARGET WHO FEELS THE RIGHT TO SPEAK NEAR HIM ?     sorry....        anyway mohan's writing really has been so    let's starve a horse, lead it to poison water, wait for it to slowly almost die, then shoot it 6 times. like oh okay! so i understand the frustration but her fans are lowkey as delusional as langdon fans...          obviously because javadi has done nothing wrong and only been super competent and able to #handle it, no one gaf about her....   i also realised i do enjoy whitaker as the actual pathetic sopping meepy character he is on the show and not whatever fanon delusion is fuelling him. my request for fanon delusion is that we need trans girl denise whitaker in a will-they-wont-they bully-victim dynamic with her rooommate the prickly trinity santos PLEASE GOD IF YOU CAN HEAR ME.....     genuinely that 'oh you like having me around' argument was SOOOOO.... i CAN SEE IT SO CLEARLY,... WHITAKER TAKE E RIGHT NOW YOU CAN BE SAVED.... obviously robby breaking down and causing damage destruction everyone by lashing out is really good tv and i enjoy seeing it, dana is lowkey whatever, but i really liked emma and also really liked the digby case and everything that happened there :) digby was genuinely so so sweet...which is why i liked it, i didn't care for the Nurses are good people for treating a homeless person like a real person like I sure hope you would!, mel and mckay were given Nothing to work with but it's okay i'm going to be riding that stud4butch parker ellis x mel king high until s3 when they become canon that's #MyTruth.... the thing about both characters is that people love to ship propagandize them and it really hurts because like mel and langdon are Fine on the show, I don't really care, it's nice that mel has a friend but we really could crack at it again with trinity like at one point i believe it can happen i really doooo... 

this is going to hurt
I think this show is actually really really well written and i think the [talks to camera]-bit really really good and really works with it and i think it made a really good choice of adaptation to split his character traits/stories between multiple protagonists, and I think there is something so well done in showing unpleasant/unlikeable/uncharming people and the conditions that made them so and how much >That doesn't matter to anyone who doesn't know!!!  idk, also it's like a british show so everyone's a good actor. ambika mod really is good in this role... idk for a show that's about showing how much the system wears down on the most noble and heroic tasks/people to eventually make everything they are and do unheroic and unnoble is really really good... it's just really really good. but maybe it has a terrible second half idk haven't gotten there yet 

Q1 in BL

I did lapse into a depressive episode for the feb-march period where at one point I was scouring through mgg for a reason to live... that happens to Us All... i loved to show off my insane reading/already read stats on mgg as proof of my #Real_Fujo card but um ... so they nuked that shit... rip </3 stuff I've been enjoying lately:

Tatsuki to Tamaki  yoshida yuma
I saw the cover and I was like 'this is definitely pseudo-BL bc i haven't seen it in the yaoi tag, and lo and behold! it was. it has decent art and I think it's funny and charming and enjoy all the dynamics being presented and i think it's really self-aware in a good way, bc at one point one of the characters does an aside about enjoying the SL and wanting that to be the main cp over the actual cp and I was like >OH! So you do mean to write this in a way where, I, the susceptible reader would also be doing that!!!.... also i loooove the editor character at one point there's a panel where she holds out her own nui doll to take a picture of at a tourist spot and i'm like OP YOU GET EVERYTHINGGGG... i also think they have a really strong grasp on what their characters are and what they do and that sort of stability/direction is really nice to see.... ig it's kind of the rocky aur rani of this batch...

you are my world  bbong
I love buff uke, I love pathetic sopping wet pretty boy seme, op definitely understands what is erotic and sexy about a built male body, it's fulfilling most of my conditions even though i lowkey despite tsundere uke. however we did just get to the rape plot which i really didn't think was going to happen but it is omegaverse bl i guess....    anyway i really like it so far and op has created a dynamic i think is soooo delicious [mostly in part due to how the seme is acting] so yayyyy yiippeeeee.

courtside courtship  samjang shaman
MY GOAT 1PICK OF THIS BATCH. i love the art i love the way it's coloured i think the expressions op draws for the seme and his siblings are so fucking funny as are their interactions, i love my ukes and plots a little absurd with it AND I LOVE A TENDERHEARTED SEME!!!!! this is literally so so delicious and good for me and i really  have been waiting on this official trans stockpile for a while and I am excited for me!!!!

golden light for you  baetodi
oh i really can't say that much about it bc i am knocking against the concept and older uke and stupid young puppy seme, but the uke is litr so handsome and my type so it's good for me because of that... and i do like yakuza mafia plot like ofc i love dumb mindless violent dog uke like that's catnip to a guy like meeee ... i also do love a mentally fragile delicate suicidal seme [coming up later] but this guy does not stay in that state for long enough... i also love a young girl side character soooo cuuute to meeee

family liver registry   soru
speaking of cute little babie girl children... i'm sorry i'm easy i litr love a co-parenting bl it's so funny to meeee... litr the little sister is so facking cuuute and i love her gag with the made up mascot character of choice ...   nice dynamics nice set up nice art im enjoying everything. it's randomly supernatural and it did feel like Well? What Ok peggles but i like when the seme is a victim to Ploys and Schemes and Susceptible to Evil Influence better than when the uke is so that's a plus... also i love the exact kind of idiot the seme is so that's also enjoyable to me... 
 
the taming   chada 
just put the buff handsome black hair uke and delicate frail prettyboy seme in the bag. just put the fries in the bag bruh. we all know what i like and this is fulfilling the base requirements. i actually don't like size difference that much but it's fine.. it's not like Bad  i also love the class difference/servant-master cosplay so it's going to be sooo sad when it ends but let me enjoy it while i can... 

the 11th school trip   do haneul
i like the art and character design. pretty regular webnovel mystery solving bl set up... another one to the bag of emotionally fragile delicate semes that have to be treated with care and handled carefully... i will not be reading this again until the extras come out so like, see you in 100390404 years... I'll be here.. enjoying bl for ever... 

office hero   LattePanda
shoutout to LattePanda my goattttt.... beautiful textures and lines and always understanding plain/handsome black hair uke and prettyboy seme ... and this time he's psychologically tortured and cold and distant and ill of health.... LITERALLY WHAT MORE COULD I ASK FOR!!! i also love the one-sided reincarnation love trope i love when a guy suffers romantically it's always good for me.... 

sorry that these reviews were so scant in detail but like most of these are only 20-ish chapters rn I don't have much to say!!! 

so hopefully there was something for everyone... that's my q1 wrap-up. did personal things happen to me also? probably. actually can everyone please please please go look at my alhaitham plate rn!!! if that attachment does not work LMK i will move it onto gdocs. not only is that an image my mother has received [to which she replied: why didn't you make me anything?] but she has been told a few other harmless facts, so everyone take bets on what she's doing with that information. 

I am one of god's movie watchers even...! isn't that so exciting... recently have realised I like when movies that are good and not bad, and so, if a movie is Good I will like it... turns out, most blockbusters are bad. 1/3 of oscarbait movies are worth it. the other 3rd are biopics. the last third are decent and fun and rompy. I like movies when they are easily dissectable I think. watched: sense and sensibility [but like months ago], all of us strangers, past lives, the holdovers, anatomy of a fall, american fiction.

every movie has a guy who's a lesbian in it

sense and sensibility
>this movie has Every British person ON EARTH.... you're like omgggg Nanny McPhree and Rose Titanis.... and then the fucking MOM from SUCCESSION? you're like, okay, that's Enough famous people. BUT NO. FAKE HOUSE MD FROM HOUSE IS THERE AND THEN REAL HOUSE MD FROM HOUSE IS THERE TOO!!! BOTH OF THEM!!! and at this point, you're really like, surely there's a cap on famous british guys... FUCK ASS SEVERUS SNAPE IS THERE!!!
>this movie made me realise... that really and truly... okay 1) jane austen is always going to be like... And Beautiful Effervescent Youthful Maidens should always marry FUCK ASS OLD MEN!!! 2) i'm so austen movies are sooooo good and I will always prefer them to the books, I'm sorry!!! I'm uninitiated! i need the fucking, victorian readers' guide, I'm sorry!!! I don't understand her wit or her charm but I love her movies!!!

all of us strangers
>I made um, sib watch this with me... so I could not enjoy the sex scenes and will watch again just because well... YOU KNOW... as always paul mesco is the star of the show forever and forever TO ME. everytime you're like >why would some guy fall in love with them, and then you watch and you're like >IM IN LOVE WITH HIM!!!!! genuinely suuuuchhhh a charming actor, he's so fucking AAAGGGHHHH!!! paul mescal!!!!
>anyway he and andrew scott have crazy chemistry; uhm this movie is exaactly what it promises to be and not much more or much less....
>I don't think it's incredible, but it was nice. i think it had this choice between [gay loneliness, ideation, fantasy] and [hopeful, growth, moving forward] where w/ the former, it would just affirm and echo the themes of the movie and drive them in all the harder and stake you, and the latter would be bittersweet, but hopeful, it would promise a start, y;know. and it makes it's choice, and it's very understandable why it does what it does, because again, both would ring true to the story that's being told. it did hurted though.

past lives
>greta lee is so beautiful, I was truly so captivated by her face and how she's just so much more beautiful in motion than in photos...
>teo yoo is such a good actor, haesung's body language throughout the fucking movie did so much of the work in communicating the character where his words didn't... I'm miffed! he didn't get any nominations, because he's definitely one of the standout performances, if not The Stand Out.
>I was complaining to my roommate [and really, anyone who would listen] about the [diaspora] narrative versus the [immigrant] narrative, and how
I really do hate the diaspora narrative for how much it assumes victimhood, and this lack of choice, and you know, it panders, I think, To White People, and it affirms in many ways, The White Narrative (...) which is why I was sitting there slackjawed when this was the story that her white husband was recounting as The Story of Them. and then why me and oomr agreed vehemently and with love, as Nora asserts the importance of her choices, that these were all her decisions, that she is the active force in her own life that enacts the changes she chooses, that it was an Immigrant story. idk it was really good. it was really really good.
>there's a lot of implications and threads in the narrative that I cannot list down, just that it is absolutely the kind of love story Made For Me. I was like, thinking of this story, and then looking at the 4rl ao3 works page, and then looking at the screen. and going like What The Fuck. one has to be like SHOUTOUT TO ARTHUR. IF I WAS AT THAT BAR, I WOULD'VE KILLED MYSELF. crazy fucking scene.

the holdovers
>movies about um nothing.... NOT IN A BAD WAY THOUGH... it is like, the least depressing of the academia/misfit movies I'm pretty sure... every single type of lesbian imaginable is in this movie and that is the best part
>I think what gave this movie the most merit to me, was how it handled race, racism, etcka without ever being about racism. it was so intentional in what it showed and what roles the black characters on screen played, and how black people appeared... and I just feel like it actually did it's due diligence, without forcing any of the black characters to be Victim to Hate Crime or Reduced To Race/Skin Colour/Etc, they were allowed to exist on screen just as people with their own stories, all while refusing to ignore how hugely race played a role in the background/time period...! really cool. I hope Da'Vine Joy gets her laurels and the oscar, she FUCKING KILLEDDDD it.
>in the holdovers, the camera is always trying to Hold You At A Distance, and it's asking you to consider the bigger picture always, and how these characters Don't Fit into it. there's this disconnect with the subjects, between the subjects, etc etc, it's also very... retro? but with purpose.

american fiction
>we actually watched this after anatomie, but I'm saving best for last.
>OMG. the movie about Race and Racialised Narratives and What White People Want To Read... And Hear.... And See....
>because of what it is, it's forced to be understated, and it does a really good job of working within the confines. there's like... i think it's almost camp-y... it's very much what barbie kind of envisioned itself as... it has some really good observations, and some really good jokes. I don't think it's incredible, by any means, but I think the cast went kinda crazy...
>Jeffrey Wright was really good in this role, and I think ... BEING AN ACADEMIC, LIVING WITH AN ACADEMIC, OBSERVING VARIOUS ACADEMICS, idk he did a really good job just nailing you know, a guy who is both undramatic and yet has thoughts! again. really really good observations made throughout the movie. i think they must have done a really good job adapting the book and also, furthering some of the scope to translate into film.

anatomie of a fall
>lit. the best movie of all the oscar offerings, I will be so mad when oppenheimer wins over this... movies that touch on everything. women/men/sexism/femininity/masculinity/presentation/roles/the academique/authors/fiction|reality divide/how much of you bleeds into your work/truth/subjectivity/what makes a story/victimhood.... LITERALLY A MOVIE ABOUT EVERYTHING!!! and it did all of those things well!!! or, at least I thought so.
>it was really interesting to watch this after holdovers, because they use the camera/film so differently... anatomie is so intimate in how it shoots, all the close-ups, the little shakes, the way the camera is always asking you to look closer, dig deeper, think about what it's showing you. the way shots sweep and change as the lawyers go back and forth and ask the court to look at this from a different angle, consider now, from a different perspective, is the picture not different? just GORGEOUS imo.
>in the end... A Movie For Me? absolutely. godddd.... I loved the um, way it told the story of a 'modern woman' ... the division of domestic labour, sandra's attitude, her job, the kind of person she was, a woman can be a man and is still a woman, and you know, a man will still be a man. I love the careful way they presented sexism and assumed attitudes and viewpoints and also just, who represented who in court, and which side brought out women, which side brought out men, the kinds of men we saw.... IDK IT WAS SO GOOD AND SO CAREFUL ABOUT IT!!! and ultimately, it was a little crazy to watch this with my roommate, at one point, I turned to her and I was like, 'My god, if a man watched this, he would think this is reasonable,' and it's true. or maybe, it's not! I think it set expectations, played with expectations, and worked with expectations really well.
>oomr's gf was telling her she found it unsatisfying because the answer isn't clear, but I don't feel that way at all... i mean, in the first place, the movie was not about 'the' mystery, it was about how we see victimhood, the court, the trial; what we construct to be the truth or the story from what we know. you have all these limited viewpoints, and you know, one of those limits is literally made physical via daniel's blindness. one of those limits is language, which is fucking damning for a writer, no? IDKKKK...it was so good!!!
>there's like this note, too, of um how it cuts through between regular movie footage, to footage taped for the trial, into like, news footage, and I don't know... i do not have an overarching thing to say about that, only that it also added another dimension to this idea of like: >who tells the story like what, and it does such a good job to highlight biases as well as, this terribly As It Says moment, where you have these interviewers from a tv clip, discuss what is the best story, and how that is what decides innocence. which, this terribly on the nose moment, where you as the viewer, are confronted with this Very Real Takeaway on whether or not you think sandra is innocent or not!
>I feel like I have so many good things to say about this movie, and I don't know if I can list them all. I do know I want to rewatch it as soon as possible. I also know, that, uh, my favourite moment is the restaurant scene where you can see vincent, playing the innocent maiden, have his heart crushed by sandra's cold, dismissal. and i mean. I think that scene is so crazy. if you know lesbiana like that, just look at how they wear their respective shirts.

I was telling lin the other day, that when I have a het ship, in my mind they literally never kiss or touch sexually ever. and that's the Peak of romance. TO ME. and then she laughed at me. how is it my fault my ideal romance is two people who only touch hands like once and for the other 100% of the time make brief eye contact.

anyway, that led to some reflection. I don't think I understand what a romantic relationship is. anyway some of my top ships from the past few months. sorry if I sound crazed but writing this out is making me realize how batshit I truly am.

atotez

warning: this whole section is just [insane people things to say]
APPEAL: this is a het ship. how can two boys be a het ship? THEY CAN. atobe is a girl and if you don't get it u don't get it.

APPEAL: the most unhappy toxic het ship you will ever ship in your whole life. you know how in like gone girl, she commits murder and pins it on him and then they have to get back together to clear their names. it's literally like that. when you marry a boy because he is the best tennis player in the world and you need to own all the best tennis players in the world. and you think it's true love, because to you, possession is love.

APPEAL: how can a ship that is TWO BOYS be so steeped with all the complexes that comes with toxic girlboss branded feminism? ATOBE IS A GIRL. before you try to think, or perhaps not think, just think. atobe literally being born into so much privilege that she doesn't understand how the patriarchy affects her because it doesn't, but at the same time, it still literally does! girls who are stuck in a box!!! which is why she doesn't own a strap and she and tez will never be 'happy' at any level because it's literally just about Appearances and Love, is technically A Tennis Contract. literally don't ask me how I got all this out of ATOBE, but I did <3

yukiaka

APPEAL: lady and dog

APPEAL: narrative foils to narrative parallels to narrative reflections. I really am just saying words, but it's not about their actual relationship as much as it is what they see in each other and what they mean to each other and how all of that is unsaid and sparsely communicated and culminates to THE YUKIAKA CHAPTER. if youre a ykakist you know which one it is.

APPEAL: these people are not kissing or having sex though like I wouldn't mind. the VISION and THE APPEAL is that yuki is kiri's unreachable dream. like it is so important and romantic because it is tragic first love!!! you didn't realize you Loved him at the time! being so caught up in beating him/filling his shoes/etc etc that you never realized WHY you were chasing after him!!! if kissing happens, then it's very much like a single kiss out of pity, or Promise. not actually out of Love/Attraction but like, older figure is relenting. does anyone knowww this trope.

APPEAL: when it's TRUE LOVE because he's the one you entrust with your dream [beating tennis without tenimuho] but it's not true love because it's just not.

APPEAL: kiri thinks yuki is a girl. does not realize he is the maiden of the dynamic.

fujikiri

note: this isn't even like, a true tennis ship of mine. however, it just is one I think about A Fair Amount.

APPEAL: that manga cap of fuji damsel holding kiri.

APPEAL: [insane people things to say] the way fuji would let kiri fuck him and be dead fish pillow princess about it because he's just waiting for it to end, just so kiri stops being annoying about it, and then later, because kiri is annoying and teenage boy about it and telling everyone he fucked fuji, fuji fucks him just so kiri realizes he wasn't being serious that time and also isn't into kiri, and that's when it gets bad for kiri For Real. what can I say I'm an Allkiri/kiriAll enjoyer. and fujikiri is literally the Best place to indulge in it.

APPEAL: MISTREATMENT AND ERASURE CAN BE SO PERSONAL ACTUALLY... fuji who does not care at all about kiri and treats him with neutral politeness and takes some degree of responsibility for him due to room201 bond, however not only is kiri so stupid and also fuji so princely, but obviously kiri is not understanding of the neutral face of politeness and it's. you see how this plays out. SOMETIMES A DUDE BLINDS U AND PRINCESSES CARRIES YOU AND ACKNOWLEDGES YOUR EXISTENCE TO THE BAREST DEGREE AND YOU SWOON... what can I say kiri is simply a mistreatment and gaslighting enjoyer! guys who are mean to you but are nice to you but are mean to you >>>

APPEAL: something something they are parallels of some sort surely. and also the deliciousness of settling for second place. and never being good enough to catch up to the person u seek. etc etc.

iantheharrow

APPEAL: NARRATIVE PARALLELS AND FOILS >>>>>>> also I am notorious ianthe 1pick. so obviously I want IANTHE, who has been denied it all, to HAVE all that she wants.

APPEAL: toxic love[less] marriage that will not end in divorce even though it should because one of you is the toxic abuser in question and the other believes that she deserves to suffer.... TASTE!!! TASTE!!! FLAVOUR!!! bitches will say they want true toxic relationships and true toxic love and then ship harrowgideon. IT WILL NEVER EVER BE HARROWIANTHE!!!!

APPEAL: when you are both deeply pathetic and horrible people and all your imperfections and flaws are reflected and exaggerated in the other and IANTHE STILL WINS. idc idc that tiktok about how marriage is about winning and the whole point of harrowianthe is that Ianthe is the superior one, that her life sucks and all but harrow's sucks worse, and also Ianthe will get everything she wants even if she will not be happy because it is impossible for someone as horrible and miserable as her to be happy. WHICH IS WHYYYYYYY she wins because no matter how horrible and miserable she is, harrow is more horrible and more miserable <3333

APPEAL: okay honestly they probably do have some really terrible hatesex but the whole point is that it's TERRIBLE because they're like. the same brand of deeply virgin extreme loser repressed scholar who has never felt the touch of a woman.

APPEAL: DIVORCEES. who are not actually divorced<3. the loveless marriageisms again, except we return to the point LOVE IS POSSESSION WHICH IS NOT LOVE AT ALL.

getogojo

APPEAL: ON THE TOPIC OF DIVORCE...

APPEAL: I think I would've never gotten this off on it if it wasn't about the TRAGEDY!!! something something you think you are someone's first and they are your first and You Both give each other up.

APPEAL: they can't touch romantically because one of them is DEAD. this whole list is like Ok damn some of us are Abstinence Fucker 100000. honestly there is something so romantic about never touching any person ever because you've devoted your whole life to one person and you guys don't even touch that much to be honest. or you know that person is dead.

APPEAL: love being moral failure <3

kaejean

APPEAL: Narrative-------- [the crowd is mouthing along the next words at this point which is making it hard for op not to feel embarrassed]

APPEAL: People who are In Love but Not In Love but In Love. loveless marriage 2.0 except the lack of love is not about simmering hatred or internal complexes, but self-imposed distance on both sides<3 the coworkerisms of it all. people you know better than yourself but only because both of you are like so dedicated to the same thing, rather than to each other.

APPEAL: the way it's like kaeya is devoted to jean, but jean is devoted to mond AGAINST jean being more fond of kaeya personally, while kaeya holds her at a distance and a much less personal light. idk how to explain this point. work-life balance but twisted and sick.

APPEAL: people who never ever touch because they're both repressed and if they do touch it's either very knightly or very coworkery. WHEN YOU ARE THE LADY AND SHE IS THE KNIGHT AND YOU ARE THE KNIGHT AND SHE IS THE LADY. crazyyyyy

trying to think of couples who actually do touch and the outliers are. almona. um. ummmm. I have to explain that it's not that I don't think of my ships having sex, it's that I think about them Not Having Sex. like I will truly be like 'and the Absolutely Nothing Happens.' and that's it. well I guess kirifuji have sex but that's like just twice. I completely forgot to mention dr but I'm so sick of writing this post already and also I think I make it obvious what drives dr for me. in um. every other post. 

anyway damn it really is true that sometimes u don't care about the relationship you just care about how it reflects on each half's character and arcs....bitches who are only into shipping for THEMATIC IMPLICATIONS and NARRATIVE PURPOSES and PERSONAL COMPLEXES... you cannot go anywhere with me.

I too wanna jump on the trend. LOL. I’m keeping the list to ships I still agree with… rather than ships I genuinely can no longer stand lmfao. sorry if this isn't the most coherent tho LOL.

I actually just jotted down the names first, and then I realized some things were uh… patterns. I feel like some of these choices make it seem like I dislike most popular accepted pairings for most fandoms. which is untrue. I only dislike ships if they’re bad. I’m not receptive enough to be blankly fed maincouple and go for it. there’s also a fair amount of ships where the fanon version is Bad but the Canon version is good.

common standing
— people who are friends, people who understand each other or make efforts to understand each other, even if those efforts are somewhat futile. bonus points if there’s a third person who triangulates their complexes. bonus points if there’s a gap. bonus points if a distance seems uncloseble but they’re closer to each other than to others. bonus points if that’s unintentional.
— I just think the best ships are reliant on strong friendships or strong foundations. and, I think past that, there needs to be a common tie that links the two together that isn’t just — they have history. they’re kind of blankly by each other’s side. like whether it’s because they’ve both been left behind, or because they want to be together — a connection matters. as so, it’s titled ‘common standing’.
— bonus points for lowkeyness. bonus points if it’s not the person you thought you’d be stuck with. bonus points if it’s not the person you want to be stuck with.

*note: a lot of het ships I like and think should be romantic, I ship because they’re written with the goal of the two only being friends which is What makes them Good.

jason/nico

bro if you don't think jasico should've been Canon Unfollow Me Right Now. like, okay, sorry to be a jasicoist in 2021 but this should've been both their endgames. everything was there!!! there was something seriously personal in jason being the first and only person to reach out to nico — and that wasn’t even in the typical protag to series outsider way where He’s Still Thinks Nico Is Weird Though. he genuinely was the first person to be nice to Nico and mean it!!! it was seriously so treacherous the way rr wrote their bond to just fizzle out….UMMM no it wouldn’t. solangelo was so rushed in last minute while jasico had a WHOLE FUCKING BOOK to go off on. IDK. The First Person To Be Nice To You CAN be something so personal and romantic!!! further criminally underappreciated aspect is that while sure, jason is perfect golden boy whatever dude, he's lame and boring, but social freak nico is among the coolest characters in the series so like. the flavour! the excellence! the teamwork they had! the bond! what if both of you had to stand down against Motherfucking CUPID. the whole thing with the west wind meeting them and then fighting cupid of all gods.... and these two DIDN'T end up together? they were just too ahead of their time. I'm upset.

piper/leo

sorry for not being your feminist queen by being like And... PIPER didn’t need a man! but this probably was the most feminist option that wasn’t like lesbianism for her [she ends up Bi so #slay anyway]. this is the only good het pjo ship because they were written to be *only* friends. also shared jason inferiority complex and general insecurity re… everything. Idk a while ago I was like Huh Aren’t they kinda narrative parallels...and you know, if you have a hazy memory of these books like I do, THEY ARE. plus being the sidekicks to jason’s main character … I guess it’s classic ronmione precedent but that precedent exists and is perfect for a reason!!! also, biggest thing, is that neither of them see each other as who they want. which compounds on the whole jason’s sidekick leftovers and their own outsider complexes soooo much because they don’t #win.

harryluna

there’s this gifset of them from the sixth movie where harry takes luna as his date to the slugclub. and there’s obviously a moment either preceding, or after where someone goes ‘luna?’ and harry goes ‘luna’s cool. I like luna.’ and another one where in the fourth movie, luna dresses in a lion head costume for harry’s quidditch game … all this to say!!! they should’ve been the canon straight endgame!!! justice for weird girls!!! etc!!! again the whole angle of like, this is not the person who harry thought he’d end up with or who he thought he wanted compounding on all his complexes, but in the end — it’s luna!!! they’re friends!! even if she’s not cool quidditch girl like ginny is, she’s helped on his adventures, he still sees and appreciates her charms. not to be unfeminist and make this about harry, but piperleo is about piper To Meeee! but, luna is one of the best examples of harry’s kindness and receptiveness because even to the other ‘outsiders’ he befriends, she’s the weird one out and every single time, he’s like ‘no luna is cool’ … obviously luna understands harry well enough, and harry even if he doesn’t understand her, is still willing to try!!! something about luna showing the best of harry's best traits...idk!

touka/kaneki/hide

for a trio with such little meaningful canon interaction, just throughout the series the willingness to search for the other, fight for the other, wait for the other... idk it really was just super moving everytime you read it. I think when you read through the story, the relationships feel very unfair and wasted because of how one-sided it is. but, and this is something I feel is better conveyed in the art than the actual story, but the unyielding kindness and endless forgiveness they all had for each other just at some point makes the relationships feel so warm. prime example is touka through out :re. and like the way haise cries when he first has coffee from :re is the emotion that feels carried out through all of their moments. no idea if I explained that well but yeahhh.

bokuto/kuroo

when I say guys who are friends. I have this curse where all of my ships get uh, brozoned by fandom at large because friendship is the most romantic thing ever to me and friendship is not romantic to the masses who think friendship is just friendship. sorry for not needing romantic juxtaposition to value dynamics. IDK if you’ve read any bokuto and kuroo interactions then you get it. also find it hilarious that like… bokuaka/kuroken are thought of as closer pairs which is due to team proximity, but they’re actually best friends/better friends with each other. THE HAPTICS you know!!! it is not about the person you end up spending the most time with, but the person you seek out regardless of distance! [and school rivalry!]. best hq ship To Me Til This Very Day. sorry for liking Guys Who Are Just Dudes. I Will Never Change. I Will Never Improve.

best friends
— you’re like how the fuck is this different from ‘people who are friends’ just trust bro. honestly, mark lee just put it the best way ‘even ten minutes away from him makes you miss him’
— I feel like the only way to explain Best Friends is like. the kind of ship that needs no other characters or ecosystem or whatever. the world is just consumed by the concept of the other person.
— I don’t know! like just as a shipper, as also on the narrative level... it’s Just About These Two. like they need to be beside each other at all times. any conversation they have with someone else feels like a waste of time. they don’t need anyone but the other person. the universe becomes so small. the feeling is so all-consuming.
— it’s also like. okay if you’ve had a best friend you’ve been homoerotically connected with then you know. that’s just all it feels like. not to get personal but like, for like half my high school career, I’d walk into a store and my first and only thought would be ‘what would _ like from here?” this shit makes you be so insane it’s not a joke.

iwaoi

:,) idk if it was actually supported in canon but every iwaoi fic represented iwaoi Like That. tho it is canon that oikawa’s genius could’ve been drawn out more by a better ace but he wanted iwacchan. Or something like that. ALSO THEIR LITTLE END STORY….

dan and phil

not to be like I was a Phannie in 2014/2015 possibly 2016 but like, I was. I think it’s like obvious why people were phans.

markhyuck

it’s so interesting. Because this is something you grow out of. like it’s this singlemindedness that very teenhood based, and like mahae have grown out of it. which is obviously not a bad thing, and is honestly a necessary step to having better friendships and relationships. but it’s still bittersweet, no? everytime I’m like was markhyuck ever really all that and I remember them and they wereeee… I think like… it got really popular to push all the pining onto haechan’s side, but what that narrative misses out on is that hc was mark’s best friend also!!! the in love with your best friend factor is only applicable if you’re BEST FRIENDS.

star, star, sun
— either about reaching one person, or catching up to them. whatever ideal you have is clouded with them.
— making another person burn. I don’t know. I feel like it’s the best way to put it. you’re not interested in something until this other person.
— this is where most narrative parallels/narrative foil pairings tend to go.

redgreen

redgreen is the ORIGINAL rivalship of all time. TO ME. redgreen seriously perfect because green is an asshole and red seems nonreactive AF but is also competitive enough to beat his ass and take champion from him. and then fuck off to mount silver afterwards because he's that fucking depressed over it and needs to repent. THERE'S NO WAY IT'S NOT GOOD. it's about the mutual hateship that has Layers underneath it. which is green hates red, and red doesn't hate green, he just wants to not be hated by green. IT'S VERY DEEP. and okay I admit all of the fun is in the fact you only have FR/LG to work off of, BUT there's nothing like hating someone because they made you the most short-lived champion of all time, but they only did that because they wanted to be acknowledged by you. LIIIIKEEEEEEE. green's longstanding immaturity + refusal to not be a dick is also a huge part of why it remains good even post 'reconciliation'. sometimes people literally don't need to grow up and mature and become agreeable. sometimes it's about being two fucked up halves of a misshapen relationship!!!
redgreen is also... LOL very indicative of how I like t/b dynamics in specific iterations of rivalships... I explained what I thought about this exact dynamic to lin and she laughed at me for the next hour of our call. how is it my fault I also think t/b dynamics are also about winning and the loser needs to be the winner to balance it out.

ushishira

this ship fucks so hard because shirabu doesn’t value ushijima as a person, but only his strength. and he changes the trajectory of his whole volleyball career for that strength. NOW THAT FUCKS. THAT FUUUUCKS!!!! love it when characters are so consumed by their ideals. also hilarious because I think ushijima did like shirabu as a person which shirabu obviously didn’t give a fuck about. I love it when people are not on equal standing at all.

kenhina

okay if you read the last page of ch.305 and didn’t fucking go This Whole Time…. It’s Been A Love Story… [also do want to say, this nekoma match is where the series ended for Me because I thought it was narratively fitting] then like you have serious problems. You have no idea how to read. Etc. KENMA THINKS VOLLEYBALL IS FUN. BECAUSE HINATA MADE IT FUN FOR HIM. THAT’S LITERALLY TRUE LOVE RIGHT THERE!!! + the fucking knife + cage imagery later on. OH YEAH. OH YEAH. they could also be a fair fit for the common understanding section but they're here because chapter305 and the few chapters after Are the Sacred Kenhina Texts. TO ME.

roleswap
I thought this was more complicated to explain than it is but it's not. I just like when boys are girls. also these aren't like 'formative' ships, they're Recent ships that I believe very deeply in. I don't think any of them really need explanation LOL. though this category has a fair amount of celibate work wife/work husband dynamics also.

• jaime/brienne - inversed genderswapped beauty and the beast. the knight x lady [who is a lord] dynamic. jaimebrienne is everything. just Everything.
• shinobu/giyuu - work wife/work husband slay. NARRATIVE PARALLELISM SLAY ALSO!!!
• jean/kaeya - work husband/work wife slay WITH genderswapped social standingisms and repression on every single side to make up for it. jeankaeya is simply the best mondstadt ship.

final notes
you're like 'damn. where is renhyuck though' it has come to my attention while writing this. I was originally going to put renhyuck in the 'star, star, sun' section but then I realized they fit every section. which the best ships obviously fit more than one section [kenhina notably]. but to fit All. I won't bother explaining it because if you know u know. and if you're like ? about them fitting /best_friends, I would like to direct your attention to ridin' and hot sauce era renhaech.

other ships that are very characteristic/explanatory of my tastes but were not 'formative': hori/miya, yaguchi/mori (blue period), yaguchi/takahashi (blue period), nyu/kyu, [all the jjk ships that I like], lyx/yy, yukimura/kirihara, fuji/kikumaru

there's a fair amount of 'platonic' ships that fit into ^^^ but it might've gotten confusing if I included them. in saying that. when I ship things romantically, my end vision for them might not be #established_relationship in the usual sense. I like acknowledgement and mutual exclusivity, but they don't have to actually be romantically involved or particularly intimate [why the 'celibate' in workplace romance is there]